How to get more press in less than 30 minutes per day

Getting press is often more about being a good listener. If you carve out time to listen you’ll find more opportunities to get to know and engage the writers in your industry. If you understand what they care about (on topic and off topic), what gets them excited, what gets them mad and what’s top of mind for them it will be much easier to capture their attention.

But in the absence of having Hootsuite or TweetDeck open all day long it’s almost impossible to keep track of every article, tweet, post and share from the writers in your industry. After all we have jobs filled with meetings, events and travel so it is easy to miss stuff.

Here are some tips to see more and get more done in less than 30 minutes per day.

Create a list of core writers to follow

Assuming you’re already following or have a list of the writers that are important to your industry it is helpful to organize them into a list or several lists – you’ll find it is much easier to spot trends and pick up themes across writers. If not I recommend researching a core group of industry publications and narrow your focus down to a group of writers based on their beat. Follow them on Twitter and Facebook and read what they’ve been writing and saying on social media to get to know their interests.

Once you know whom you want to keep track of, build your list in Cloze. Here is how to get started:

Already have your lists built in Twitter or Facebook? No problem – you can import them into Cloze too.

Scan the tweets, posts and shares three times a day

Cloze will now automatically keep track of everything the writers in your lists are saying across the major social networks – making it easy to catch-up. With all of their posts consolidated across Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn organized by writer it is easy to scan every article they share and every comment they make.

Reply, retweet, favorite and reach out

Building relationships with writers can come in many forms. If you spot an article you like, retweet it or like it. If it makes sense – comment. Often times writers will ask questions or for help – lend a hand even if it doesn’t directly relate to your company. Building relationships is a two way street.

Get others in your organization involved in the conversation

You might try, but you can’t do it all alone. You’ll see better results and build credibility for your organization if more people from your company are engaged with your industry’s influencers and writers – especially if you have experts that are better suited to comment. As you scan through your Lists you’ll likely also spot opportunities for others to join the conversation – share these posts and articles with other in your company as it makes sense. Circulate.it is a great way to create a daily internal digest to help get others in your organization engaged with the media.

My final piece of advice is to keep your lists manageable. When you focus on a core group you’ll build deeper relationships and spend more time engaging rather than trying to read through an unrealistic volume of content. If you find yourself spending significantly more time than 30 minutes a day – consider paring back your lists or enlisting more people on your team to watch their own group of writers.

Good luck!

Alex Cote is the CMO & Founder of Cloze. You can find this blog post, as well as additional content on the Cloze blog located here. You can also follow Alex on Twitter (@alexcote) by clicking here.